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Show $1 million in federal funds lost By KRIS JOHNSON Staff Writer FARMINGTON The Davis County School District has lost $1.1 million in federal funding for the 1991-92 school year, the school board was told this week. "This loss will impact every aspect of the Davis County School District," said Rich Kendell, superintendent for the Davis County Coun-ty School District. The $1.1 million educational chunk was sliced out of the federally fed-erally funded "impact aid" program. pro-gram. The federal government program pro-gram was developed to assist communities com-munities that lost property taxes due to federal military bases. The assessed property value of Davis County is $7 billion. Half of that property can't be taxed because it's owned by Hill Air Force Base, which is a federally owned institution. institu-tion. The school district qualified for $2.2 million from the impact aid program in 1990 because more than 20 percent of its students were from military families. But the impact aid program slashed Davis County's educational funding in half when its population of military students dropped to 18.77 percent this year. The $1.1 million difference will come out of the district's operating budget. "It is a real dilemma for the school district to be faced with a revenue shortfall when budgets are already tight," said Kendell. "This problem is compounded by the fact that Utah has the lowest federal revenue per child of any state in the United States. We are low on federal revenues to begin with, and this compounds our present pre-sent problem," he said. Utah only gets $130.26 in federal aid for each student. In contrast, Alaska gets $971.26 per student, and the nation's average is around $500 or $600 per student, said Kendell. Moreover, the superintendent said federal laws have been written and formulas constructed that are a disadvantage to Utah. "They're basing their figures on old census data," he said. "We've asked our congressional leaders to try to rewrite the law and adjust the formulas. The congressional congres-sional delegation is sympathetic to the situation," he said. The school board will identify what educational areas will be affected af-fected at the fust budget hearing June 4. "We'll try to enhance our situation as best as we can," Kendell said. |